What If I Never See You Again

I've enjoyed the company of a lot of people in my life, but in truth only a handful seem to haunt my mind.

I'm sorry if you're not one of them, and you wish you were.
It's not like I never think of you, don't worry.
I'm sorry if you're one of them, and you wish you weren't.
I'm not going to try to ruin your life, don't worry.

I'm sorry if I wasted time you could have spent with someone you might still want to hang with...

I can already hear the person reading this and responding as if I'm having a pity party.
Fuck you, you don't understand me and you're probably the one who can't take emotions.
I've carried that weight a long time.
I can handle it.
I can be broken and still rise.
I mean this. I don't want your pity, I want your understanding.

If I were so great, they'd want to stick around - they'd miss me like I miss them - that's just how that works.
Something is wrong, off, not ready, blocking, distancing, turning things sour.
Being around me doesn't tend to make people happier.

What do people get out of my company?

They feel smart. They can bitch and complain. I can pay close attention and listen and be engaged.
I validate and question. I dig further and connect. For some, I'm just there, and that's enough.
I ask questions. I weigh the sides. I give advice. I try to make you feel better. I try to unburden you. Empathize.
But you aren't laughing, enjoying yourself, at ease. You aren't the same with me as you are at the bar or with your other friends. When you're with me, you are more focused and responding as if life were a paper we're constantly writing together. I used to appreciate this way of being. But it doesn't make people happy. It's not what I miss the most.

I miss the adventure. The dreaming. The smoking and singing.
Being artists. Being badasses. Being runaways in the night. Being out together. Making the world our own.
So smart and soulful and sincere and wild.
The feeling of who I was when I was with you.

I see their faces over and over, the people I miss.
Even the people I know I should not miss, should not contact - I miss.
I wish you were here now. I wish you were hugging me. And that's saying a lot because I've grown hypersensitive to touch.
I wish you were telling me everything is going to be okay.
I wish you were forgiving me. I wish you would say it's all in the past. I wish we'd go smoke a cigarette together, like we did.
I wish you could call me your best friend, again.

Everyone I've ever loved this much, loved like this, I have memories smoking cigarettes with:
On the porch.
Playing chess.
Prague.
In the car with the windows down, music up.
At Rozie's. The bunny tree.
The picnic table.
The bathroom with the pink tile.
At the bar.
Outside the smoke shop.
The church steps.
The basement full of VHS.
So luxurious.
Any time it rains.

Funny how I've gotten attached to cigarettes and people in much the same way.
I've tried to quit. Thought I was over it. Listing all the reasons I'm done. Can't help it. Come back.
I tend to chain smoke, and then I'll feel sick and quit cold-turkey only to come back again a few months later.

When I crave a smoke now, just what am I craving?
Nicotine, or you? Do they combine to form some kind of everlasting love?

God damn you were so perfect. You'd gone through adversity. You'd lived a creative life. You thought about interesting things and you dabbled in alternative realms. You were educated, yet full of fantasies. You were proper, respectable, but didn't mind getting your hands dirty. You understood beauty. You understood darkness. You weren't afraid of all the things people shy away from. You cursed and laughed and smoked and sang. You were sweet and vicious and filthy and glorious and free. You understood me, and you were everything I wanted to be.

Life might be shorter, but it was better each second I was getting closer to death with you.
42 wonderful years vs. 100 lonely, miserable ones.
Worth it.
You got me thinking. Inspired. You made me feel seen. Safe. I felt connected with you. Belonging.
How can you die if you never lived? You made me feel alive. Something worth existing.
Breathing in the smoke together. Sharing life itself.
Nothing would have been the same without you.

I know I wasn't always lovely to be around. Too dark. Too unhappy.
My thoughts can twist against you. Against myself. Against my past. Defeating the future.
I wish it were different. I'm trying to grow up. I'm trying to learn.
It can be hard when I don't know which lessons the universe is trying to teach me.
I wish you knew what you meant to me, at least.
Even if you've really given up.

You'll always be a part of me. I will see you in everything. Art, movies, shows, books, inventions, philosophy, religion, race, feminism, political systems of control, fashions, adventures, burdens, life lessons, loves and hates.

Music. So. Much. Music.

The day-to-day, the nightmares, and the big dreams.
Your laugh. Your smile. Your presence. Your voice. That face you used to make.
Your insights. Your hobbies. Your favorites.
Your wisdom. Your fun facts. Your creativity. Your humor. Your kindness. Your passion.
What you inspired inside of me. What you planted there. What you left behind.

I realize you may not give a shit about me, but I don't care.
I can't help it.

If nothing else, you can feel validated knowing how awesome you are
to at least one person.

I'm sorry it's harder to say this all to your face.
I don't always want to give my love away because you might throw it back at me, or stomp on it.
I don't want to watch you struggle to say something nice when you don't feel anything close to what I do.
I don't want you to make a quick and accommodating response just to keep things nice.
This way I won't know how you felt unless you want me to know. Until after you've digested it.
This way you can know.

I realize you might not know exactly who you all are, but you must. I think you know.
And really, the more I write, the more people who come to mind. People who were creative and free and smart and bold too.
I don't love you less, but I can't deny you haven't always been on my mind.
Still, you should feel good too knowing how I see you. It blows me away to imagine anyone seeing me that way.
Am I just giving out the compliments I wish I was getting?
Ah, fuck. See, this is why we can't have nice things.
No, fuck your psychology this time. God, I can't even love anyone properly.

And I realize that some might discount my love because it's not just for them, alone.
They'd think I'm full of shit this whole time because it isn't just about one person.
Because it's you, and you, and you, and you - but goddamn can't that be enough?
It's it nice just to know
in this one heart
you are truly beloved?

It's real! It's a real feeling! I get it a lot and in all different scenarios!
That much I can say.
What else in this life can you say that about?
You have a special place in my world.
How horribly must you think of me to feel like that's a bad thing...

I might not buy you presents, or check in enough, or take good care of you -
I might not be anything like your parents or lovers or what you'd expect of love -
but if you could just put your hand inside my chest, inside my guts, inside my head
and feel how I feel when I think about you
see what I see
know what I know...

Do you have to be the absolute center of my universe to believe my love?
Aren't you already?
You and you and you?

And yeah, you - you know who - it would have ended with you.
Maybe it's great that it didn't - but are you ever going to come back?
Even if you don't, you can't fault me for loving so many when I was perfectly happy with you.
Have I lost anything by loving them too? Was that the lesson all along?
Does it mean anything that I still love you most? That if I had to choose, I'd choose you?
Does it mean something that if you never came back, I'd choose another, eventually, probably, and still find some peace in that?

I realize I'm devoting a lot of myself to people who might not think well of me at all, while in the meanwhile I'm not focusing on the friends who would have stood by me until the end.

I realize, too, that I've complained about every single person I've ever loved.
Who has ever been my friend.
No one leaves my sight without a good and a bad.

But I've never given up on anyone. I've never said goodbye forever. The door is still open.

Still, I can understand why you might not want to walk back through it.

I see a pattern in my friendships:
After we got comfortable with each other, we'd start to hang out every single day. Eventually, I'd think they weren't quite smart enough. And if they were smart enough, they were boring. And if they were both smart and interesting, dynamic and worldly, then they were hard to trust. And then comes the feeling of not being good enough, dragging each other down, holding each other back, being a misery. Then I'm worried I'm horrible and they're just putting up with me for the weed, or the company, or the bitchfest, the attention and the comforting, to get ideas for their own projects, or to make fun of me later with their real friends. I end up just shutting myself away from everyone so no more bad things can happen. I'm not saying I was right about those assessments, but that's how it has seemed to work.

I'm sorry if I sound like an asshole.
It crosses my mind: who the fuck am I to say who is smart, or free, or good enough?
What does any of that shit even mean?

I realize all of that comes from me - my needs and ideas and misconceptions and bullshit - by writing that out, I can see how I unconsciously run my friends through a series of tests no one has ever passed. The smartest, most fascinating people still can't be trusted - because I can't trust anyone really. Things change, and build up, and break down, and I know over time, eventually, things will go bad. I might be willing to live with whatever comes, but they aren't. They have higher standards. They demand a better love. I keep trying to find ways to know what's really going on, to gauge what's safe, and even when I choose to suspend my disbelief, choose to trust in the moment, the anxious thoughts come creeping back once I'm alone again.

I trusted so easily in the beginning. But now I see I could never be sure who was really my friend, a true blue friend, or if they were using me somehow. Making me their joke. Being a "frenemy". Waiting it out. Enjoying every moment they thought they got one over on me because there I was thinking I was so smart or whatever and I was so open and honest and they could pick at my tender spots and I'd just take it and take it.

Maybe it wasn't so malicious or well-thought-out. Maybe they thought they might like me but needed to experience me to know that they didn't. Can't blame them for that. Just feels like shit because I like them so much. They are so worthy. If they reject me, I must really be shit.

Even if I'm just not their cup of tea, rejection is going to hurt because I could drink them on the regular.
Maybe I'm hung up because it doesn't feel like they really got to know me - how could they when I was still growing?

I was worried about a lot of things that come down to moral principals I don't even always hold. In an ideal world, all acts would be judged on an individual basis with logic to the context of the situation. But something in me is policed by my past, by the severe fear of punishment instilled as a kid. Of what was right and wrong. Well, weed is legal now so how much else might they have been wrong about?

I've just been full of fear. Fear of being a bad person. Fear of being betrayed. I was worried about lying, stealing, cheating. I was worried they didn't know what they were doing, and were going to bring me down with them or get me in trouble. I was worried I'd get stuck with someone who just saw me as their toy or puppet or dog. A joke. And if they were great, I was worried I'd burn them out. I was worried it just wouldn't last. I was worried I was or would be a disappointment. I was worried I made the wrong choice. I was worried they didn't really understand themselves, their own being, and so didn't realize certain dynamics of our relationship. Trying to point out these dynamics often lead to being insulting in some way. I was worried that I was foolish, naive, gullible, institutionalized, a baby. I was worried they knew all my weak spots, and they would use them against me. I was worried I'd never be able to leave, even if it hurt to stay, because I had fallen in love with them - everything I did risked losing them forever - until I did - and in the end it turned out they never intended to be with me anyway.

I've never controlled my mind very well.
Usually, I don't even want to try - I'm not good at it, and I don't want to stunt what might otherwise bloom.
Truth reveals itself in everything, even lies, if you know how to find it.

I want to be a good person. It matters to me.
My own idea of good.
In a world where I believe we make our own meaning, I feel it's important to make myself into who I want to be.
We make up the world.
So we each need to do the work to make the world how we want it - don't just leave it to what has been.
It takes a lot to know what you really want though.
It's not an easy thing to do.

I don't like to hurt people's feelings. I don't want to do that.
The best case scenario would always be that one could be organic and honest and the other would not be destroyed by it.
Of course, when being honest it helps to also be right.
Said with love, nothing should be off-limits for discussion at least.
When I was younger, I think I hurt a lot of feelings, and I didn't care because I thought I was right.
Intellectuals can be dicks that way.
Even so, I don't try to say or do anything with the sole purpose of being mean.
I'd have rationalized it needed to be said.
Or that I was in such an emotional state, the words spilled out and in that case I'm sorry.
When that happens, someone else's voice comes out. The scripts read off by unhappy people in my past.
Defense mechanisms to separate us with words.
But even if all you have are bad memories of me, I want to improve. I want to make it right.
I still want to die having left the world a little better than how I found it.
I still care.

I tried really, really hard not to, believe me.

As always, why not both?

Let everything go. See what stays. See what comes back. See who cares.
And if not now - wait. See what happens.

But if you won't stay, come back, or care
please find this message
feel this
believe it
take it with you...

If I never see you again:

You gave me reasons to exist.
You made me who I am today.
You showed me what life could be
and your version was better.
I love you.